12 dead in riots after Indian guru's rape conviction

Mobs rampaged across a north Indian town, leaving 12 people dead and buildings in flames, after a court declared a quasi-religious sect leader guilty of raping two of his followers, according to police and a hospital doctor.

Ram Rahim Singh, who had denied the charges of raping the two women at his ashram in 2002, was taken into custody and would be housed in a jailhouse in the nearby town of Rohtak in Haryana state until his August 28 sentencing hearing, prosecutor H.P.S. Verma said.

Panchkula administrators had feared that a guilty verdict would trigger violence among the tens of thousands of followers who had camped overnight awaiting the verdict.

Violence also broke out in several places across the neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab, police said. Railway stations in the towns of Malout and Balluana were ablaze, and two coaches of an empty train parked in New Delhi's Anand Vihar station were also set on fire.

Angry mobs also attacked police in the town of Sirsa, where the guru's ashram is located, according to a local police control room.

The guru's Dera Sacha Sauda sect claims to have some 50 million followers and campaigns for vegetarianism and against drug addiction. It has also taken up social causes such as organising the weddings of poor couples.

Such sects have huge followings in India. It's not unusual for leaders to have small, heavily armed private militias protecting them.

When the guru left his ashram in Sirsa early Friday for the hearing, he was accompanied by a 100-vehicle convoy.

Police had erected heavy metal barricades topped with barbed wire along main roads in the town, a quiet residential suburb of Chandigarh, which is the common capital of Haryana and Punjab states.

The case was tried in a special court run by India's top agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. Such cases have prompted public violence in the past.

Clashes in 2007 between the Dera Sacha Sauda followers and members of the Sikh faith left at least three people dead in north India.

In 2014, six people were killed when followers of another religious leader, guru Rampal, fought pitched battles with police who were attempting to arrest him for contempt of court after he repeatedly failed to appear in court in connection with a murder trial.

In a televised appeal on Thursday, Ram Rahim Singh had asked his supporters not to resort to violence, but some said they would not tolerate a verdict that went against their leader.

“I consider guru-ji to be only next to God,” farmer Malkit Singh said as he squatted on the ground in a Panchkula park, saying Ram Rahim Singh had cured him of a decade-long addiction to drugs. “There is a God above,” he said. “Our guru-ji follows the path of truth.”